Stratford Waterfront

Clustered around what was the heart of the Park during the Games, these 780 new homes will form part of a brand new cultural and higher education district, known as the Cultural and Education District.

The Cultural and Education District scheme will be made up of two sites on the Park, clustered around the iconic Stadium, ArcelorMittal Orbit and London Aquatics Centre.

The ambitious project will bring together some of the world's most exciting education and cultural organisations, including University College London, University of the Arts London's London College of Fashion, Victoria and Albert Museum and Sadler's Wells. The project is expected to deliver 3,000 jobs, 1.5 million additional visitors to the Park and an estimated £2.8 billion of economic value to Stratford and the surrounding area.

This area of the Park went through the most significant transformation, turning it from an area of heavy industrial use, and the depot for some of London’s earliest railways, into a beautiful riverside park.

People had settled in this area for a long time, with burial sites discovered here showing people living here from at least around 950 BC to Roman Britain of AD 200, but it was the coming of locomotive era that made this area the place it is today.

Stratford was transformed into a major railway intersection and depot which, by the early 1900s, employed over 6,000 people. The area was dubbed 'Hudson’s Town' after George Hudson the chairman of the Eastern Counties Railway. It was one of the capital's earliest rail lines and attracted businesses from the centre of London to relocate in the area.

The second half of the 19th century saw the commercial development of Carpenter's Road and Warton Road, the bank of the City Mill River and Marshgate Lane along Pudding Mill River, which was filled in some time ago. Most of the industry involved chemicals and this would remain the case until the latter half of the 20th century. One such company to become a worldwide name was Yardley, which once had its soap, powder and perfume factory in Carpenters Road.

The western boundary of the area is a section of the northern outfall sewer. The building of the sewer was triggered by a series of public health crises in London, culminating in the ‘Big Stink of London’ in the late 1850s when the smell coming from the Thames was so bad Parliament put engineer Joseph Bazalgette in charge of building a new sewer system.

The 1980s saw the renovation of the footpath on the sewer embankment to create the Greenway, a footpath and cycle route is now a much loved and thriving walking route along the south of the Park, and home to the View Tube.